Like wizened prospectors panning for gold, we've laid a gloved hand on new stills from Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. The two pics reveal the film's protagonists going about their bloody business. In the case of Leonardo DiCaprio's brutal plantation owner, Calvin Candie, this would seem to involve a hammer. Gulp.

Aside from the thing with the household tools, Candie boasts a Peter-Ustinov-in-Spartacus fixation with duelling slaves. Meanwhile, on the side of the angels - albeit vicious, gunslinging angels - is Jamie Foxx's freed slave. He's joined by Christoph Waltz's German mercenary, Dr. King Schultz, in his pursuit of Django's wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), a slave who's fallen into Candie's hands.

“All Django wants to do is get his wife,” Foxx told EW. “He’s not trying to cure or solve slavery. He just wants to get his life back.”

And what of Candie, target of Django's Josey Wales-like quest for retribution? “Candie is a business man who owns a plantation called Candie Land, and that’s where my wife ends up being. [To find her] we have to get in good with Candy, by me playing a valet for Christoph’s character.”

Django Unchained will be striding into a cinema near you in January 2013. Keep eyes peeled for more soon.

Of course it's impossible to determine the quality of the film from a couple of screenshots, but everything about it still screams must-see based on the story, the director, the cast. Eagerly expecting this one. More